By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
With a full-time job and a 1-year-old son, singer-songwriter Zack Fetcher has a lot on his plate. “I’m doing a lot of watching during the days, he’s a blast,” Fletcher said of his son.
Now seems like a good time to step back from performing. Still the music won’t stop. He has a spate of gigs driven by the release of the vinyl re mastered version of “Moths in the Attic,” named for the band he’s led for the past decade or so.
The trio with percussionist Kevin Jorrey and Mike Williams on saxophone has been the working format of the ensemble that made its mark on the local music scene. That’s not really the vision Fletcher had for the group. “I always had this sense that strings would be a good fit for my music.”
So, the album “Moths in the Attic” has strings.
Most recently Fletcher has premiered his work with his voice and guitar along with the Toro String Quartet at the Black Swamp Arts Festival.
On the cusp of a hiatus, he’ll present a retrospective performance Sunday, Oct. 29, 6-8 p.m. at Grounds for Thought, 174 S. Main St., in downtown Bowling Green.
He’ll start with solo work and may even fit in a number or two from his days leading the Flaming Hot Marbles, then Williams will join him for a few numbers.
On the second half, he and the Toro String Quartet will take the stage. Members of the string quartet are Malika Brower and Sujin Kim, violins, Antonia Suarez, viola, and Josh Lyphout, cello. The arrangements were written by Zakk Jones.
The last Moths in the Attic trio gig will be Nov. 9 at the Village Idiot in Maumee and the next night Fetcher will play at Howard’s Club H with the quartet.
All this winds up a career that started with his parents giving in to his request for to buy him a guitar. He took lessons with Al Foreman at BG Music and Sound.
Foreman, a member of Sledge, introduced him to BG’s vital music scene. He remembers sitting in the front row as the band played at Jed’s.
But Foreman also introduced him to some classical and fingerpicking techniques that have come to the fore in his most recent music. Beyond this string of gigs, he plans to concentrate on music for acoustic guitar.
Moths in the Attic got started in 2014. He thinks of it as a collective bringing in musicians to fill out the sound, and the album reflects that, but the trio with Jorrey and Williams is what really took off. Starting in 2017 they began gigging almost weekly.
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“We just had a sense of each other as musician. When I bring a new song to the table, they know what direction to take, how to elevate it,” he said.
The CD version of the self-titled album was four years ago today (Oct. 25). He opted for financial reasons not to release it on vinyl then. Then a few months later the pandemic shut the entertainment scene down.
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Still, he felt getting the album produced now is a good way to wrap up the work of Moths in the Attic.
He feels remastered vinyl done at Gotta Groove Records in Cleveland with Matt Earley best captures his intentions.
The members of the group are now being pulled in different directions, especially Williams, “the busiest man in Northwest Ohio show business,” Fletcher said.
The trio still has one more album in the works. Unlike the self-title session, this one captures their live sound, “It’s more jammy,” Fletcher said. That will arrive next year sometime. But whether they’ll perform to promote it, he doesn’t know.
But he’s not calling these fall shows a farewell tour.
After all, his first rock concert experience was when his parents took him to see Kiss on their farewell tour, their first farewell tour. Just recently Fletcher went to Toledo for the band’s most recent farewell tour.
